Allison D. Smith is Professor of English and Coordinator of Graduate Teaching Assistants at Middle Tennessee State University. She received a BA in Teaching Language and Composition and an MA in Applied Linguistics from California State University, Long Beach, and a PhD in Applied Linguistics/Second Language Acquisition and Teacher Education from The University of Illinois, UrbanaaChampaign. Her primary teaching and research areas include writing pedagogy, writing about pop culture, writing assessment, discourse analysis, and pedagogical grammar. Recent publications include a book chapter in MORE WAYS TO HANDLE THE PAPER LOAD, an article on journal writing for the ENGLISH LEADERSHIP QUARTERLY, and COMPBIBLIO: LEADERS AND INFLUENCES IN COMPOSITION THEORY AND PRACTICE, a book focusing on the career arcs of leaders in composition. In addition, she is one of the series editors for the Fountainhead Press X Series for Professional Development. She has two forthcoming books: THE POP CULTURE ZONE: WRITING CRITICALLY ABOUT POPULAR CULTURE (Cengage/Wadsworth, 2009) and TEACHING IN THE POP CULTURE ZONE: USING POPULAR CULTURE IN THE WRITING CLASSROOM (Cengage/Wadsworth, 2009). She is an active participant in the National Council of Teachers of English, the Conference on Composition and Communication, and the Research Network Forum. Prior to teaching at MTSU, she taught at Louisiana Tech University, where she was the Robert C. Snyder Endowed Professor of English.